5 ms·
> Top Gun will continue to exist even if you break every Blu Ray of it into tiny pieces If you destroy every recording of Top Gun, it will cease to exist. > T
by booleandilemma 4y ago
> Top Gun will continue to exist even if you break every Blu Ray of it into tiny pieces
If you destroy every recording of Top Gun, it will cease to exist.
> The bit sequence doesn't stop existing just because we delete every
manifestation
Yes it does.
And Top Gun didn't exist before 1986.
- anthk 4y agoThe concept of Pi and the irrationality of sqrt(2) predates the universe itself. Think about it.
- erklik 4y ago> The concept of Pi and the irrationality of sqrt(2) predates the universe itself. Think about it. How? Get rid of the universe, and the concept of pi doesn't exist. Pi is the ratio of a circle's circumference to it's diameter. Circles didn't exist before the universe, thus no pi. There could be another universe where circles are impossible due to whatever laws of physics exist, thus no pi.
- hackerlight 4y ago> There could be another universe where circles are impossible due to whatever laws of physics exist, thus no pi. Circles (perfect ones) are impossible in our universe, too. Circles are abstractions. If we have successfully deduced a conclusion from a set of axioms, wouldn't that deduction hold true in all possible universes? The mathematical realist position is that these abstract math objects exist independent of an observer.
- anthk 4y agoThis. Circles are just the set of all the infinite points from any point covering any degree around you having the same distance. That's why Pi it's infinite on decimals. Ditto with sqrt(2), you need to "sharpen" the triangle made from half an square forever in order to get all the decimals.
- satori99 4y agoTop Gun still exists in the minds of everyone who has seen it. It is an idea as well as a performance. And you don't need to consume any particular encoding of the performance to continue to either enjoy or hate it. Art is weird like that.
- booleandilemma 4y agoTop Gun won't exist, just people's memories of Top Gun. And memory is fallible. It changes over time. People will all remember the movie differently. The memory of Top Gun != Top Gun.
- hackerlight 4y agoWe stop knowing about it, but it still exists. It's just a number. You can't delete a number from existence, you can just delete your copy of it.
- booleandilemma 4y agoNumbers don't exist in the first place. It's like saying unicorns exist. They're a shared fiction. (A highly useful fiction, to be sure) I've noticed people in this thread are getting actual, physical things confused with concepts and mental representations of things. Confusing the map for the territory.
- hackerlight 4y agoSo you hold the Fictionalism view and reject Platonism. That's fine. This stuff has been debated ad nauseam and we're not going to break any new ground here. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/fictionalism-mathematics/ https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/fictionalism-mathematics/ > It's like saying unicorns exist. They're a shared fiction. (A highly useful fiction, to be sure) I will mention that dogs are also a useful shared fiction. We assign the label dog to a perception of a configuration of atoms that we think satisfy the criteria for what a dog is. So I'd say that numbers are more like dogs than unicorns, in that they are an abstraction that is used by us in practice to map to perceptions of physical objects.
- booleandilemma 4y agoThanks! I didn't have a word for this. I guess I'm a fictionalist :)